Posted: 8:00 am on 17th May 2012
In a media release on the Indigenous Affairs part of the 2012 Budget, the federal government insists it ‘will continue to prioritise access to the new program for people seeking to move into home ownership on Indigenous land’ – but this is a furphy. The government is well aware that people living on Indigenous land will not be able to access money from the new Indigenous homeownership program as long…
read more…
Posted: 8:00 am on 16th May 2012
At long last, services on Sydney’s highly inefficient rail network are getting some attention. Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian has announced that 750 jobs will be cut in a restructuring effort intended to reduce bureaucratic waste. Even more heartening is that RailCorp’s projected job cuts are relatively mild, consisting of voluntary redundancies to middle management, not to frontline staff who carry out the day-to-day operations on the trains. Of Sydney’s transport…
read more…
Posted: 8:00 am on 13th May 2012
It is just a little more than two years since the review of Australia’s Future Tax System (AFTS, better known as the Henry review) was released to the public, with its 138 recommendations. The Gillard government, notwithstanding its enthusiastic embrace of an audacious 40% resources super profits tax at that time, was lukewarm about the Henry package as a whole. Eager to burnish its economic reform credentials, the government now…
read more…
Posted: 8:00 am on 12th May 2012
The federal government’s stated motivation for returning the budget to surplus next financial year is to give the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) ‘maximum room to move’ on interest rates. Yet a fiscal contraction is no more effective in restraining the economy than a fiscal expansion is effective in stimulating it. In an open economy with a floating exchange rate and an inflation-targeting central bank, changes in fiscal policy do…
read more…
Posted: 12:49 pm on 7th May 2012
Budget rumours have included the announcement that, from 2013, all single parents who claim Parenting Payment will be expected to look for part-time work once their youngest child turns eight years of age. Those who don’t find a job will be transferred to Newstart Allowance, which pays $120 less each fortnight. Before 2006, single parents had the right to claim Parenting Payment until their youngest child turned 16, and many…
read more…
